What's up guys. I have a dvd copy of win7 that I purchased back in 2010 (could be little earlier or little later) and I did numerous installation on the same machine with numerous hardware chane (mobo cpu gfx ram etc) and I was always able to activate it via internet.

Now its been probably close to a year since my last win teinstallation but this time there is no hardware change and I am running into little activation issue. Internet activation fails and I have to go through phone system. I tried it few time since fri where I activated it before sp1 and after etc etc. Unsuccesfully. This copy has never been for other computers at all. Is there a limit of internet activations? Or is this a fixable bug? Copy is clean and legit.

Can't really provide an answer, but my own experiences, I've never been able to get my DVD copy of Win7 Home to validate on-line. I've always had to call in. A pain, but I've just always rolled with it. Hopefully someone can answer you and I'll pick something up along the way.

I've had the same experience with Windows activation. Even with a retail copy, which is supposedly more forgiving with activation than an OEM copy, it will want you to phone in after activating it so many times, even on the same machine. Then sporadically, it would successfully activate online again after having to phone in after a few reinstalls. Eventually I just kept track of exactly which drivers I had installed every time I activated it, and wrote down the activation code, which stays the same as long as you try to activate it with the same hardware configuration after each reinstall. That way when it asks you to phone in, you just type in the code that you wrote down on the last install. And then sometimes I would be ready to type in the code, and it would successfully activate online with no explanation of why it suddenly decided to work this time. It's screwy to say the least.

Any chance someone else has been using your license key without your knowledge?

i doubt it. i also tried another retail dvd purchased around the same time for laptop that is now sitting unused for months and also got the same phone activation issue. but i figure as long as i can activate it and keep it genuine that shouldnt be an issue.

Not sure why this is happening to you ... but since you have a boxed copy, you're entitled to some kind of support from MS, right? It's been at least a decade since I've tried to talk to them, but this might be one of those times you might want to try it. Maybe your key got blacklisted for some reason? Who knows how it works on their side.